


Downward Spiral

by Guardian_of_Hope



Series: Dark Emerald [1]
Category: Power Rangers (2017)
Genre: Angst, Blood Magic, Character Death, Dark, Gen, Major character death - Freeform, Murder, Not Fluff, Psychotic break, blood mention, very dark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-13 23:08:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10523865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guardian_of_Hope/pseuds/Guardian_of_Hope
Summary: Rita descends into madness.(Spoilers for the 2017 Power Rangers reboot.  Very dark fic. My take on why Rita turned evil.)





	

She is Rita, chosen by Destiny to wield the green Power Coin.  Trained from birth to become a Ranger and protector of her people, it was a great honor to be brought to Eltare before her choosing to be blessed by the great sages of the Morphing Grid.  It is there that her Destiny becomes clear.  She is not to return to her planet or her team, she is destined to go with others to protect a small, inconsequential planet far from her own.

At first the honor blinds her as she trains, but then she learns that her planet is gone.  The Rangers were defeated, and the team she’d trained with, had devoted herself to, had failed as well.  Their Zeo Crystal was in the hands of great evil.

It is as if a blindfold has been ripped off and she sees.  She sees how these Rangers who are her team do not treat her the same as each other.  She is an outsider who is only now seeing that they must resent her.  They have morphed, and so will continue to do so, but she is the outcast, the outsider, the intruder.

Resentment grows in her heart with ever whisper, every stopped conversation, every hesitation.  She did not ask for this.  She did not want this.  She was supposed to be with _her_ team, protecting _her_ planet.

Except her planet is gone.  Her team is dead.  The Zeo Crystal she had sworn to protect is in the hands of a madman.

Hatred grew slowly, and she hid it.  These Rangers did not recognize her emotional turmoil, did not see her resentment and growing hatred.  They expected her to think/feel/act like them, and she wasn’t.

Finally, they are sent to this tiny, no-name planet, to bond with this Zeo Crystal and to protect the denizens.

Rita isn’t sure why they are protecting this planet at all.  The creatures here lack true sentience, there are no strong power sources outside the Zeo Crystal, and it’s not significant in any way.

The isolation of their post works on her, pushing her further into hatred and resentment.

Then she hears the judgmental and self-righteous Red agree with that weak and fragile Yellow about her being unnecessary, as if _they_ weren’t breaking Code by sleeping together!

Something in Rita breaks that day as grief, resentment, and hatred push her far over the edge.  When the storm calms, she is standing over the mutilated body of the Pink Ranger and all she can do is laugh at the energy that now surges through her.  It is glorious, to feel how the power surges to her, twisted and evil, and all she can do is laugh gleefully.

Blue is so easy to sneak up on, he doesn’t even have time to turn away from the planets he is tending before she stabs him.

As for Black, well, Rita might have been raised to be a warrior and protector of the Light, but she is a child of her people as well, and she knows the ways of blood and gold.  Black is her chosen sacrifice to create a _goldar_ , animated gold and blood answerable only to her.  She saves a little from Blue and Pink to mix with her own to create the basis of the _mudar._

With an army at her back, Rita is ready for Yellow and Red, the last guardians of the Zeo Crystal.  She orders the _mudar_ to wear down the Rangers, and the _goldar_ to find the Zeo Crystal, giving it her sense of the powerful aura that the Zeo Crystal emits.  If Yellow and Red are so desperate to protect the Zeo Crystal, then let them die doing so.  Instead, she will take it and let it be the beginning of her empire of death and destruction.  It was an insult to her people that other planets thrived and ignored the danger that had devastated her own.  Rita would show them how it felt to know that your planet no longer existed.

**Author's Note:**

> I know Zordon says Rita was his friend, but this is Rita's POV, remember? In Zordon's POV, he probably saw her as his shy teammate, a friend he was still getting to know, who was grieving until one day half his team is dead with no warning and Rita has clearly lost her mind and betrayed them.
> 
> Also, mis-rated this. If it should go higher than M, let me know, yeah?
> 
>  
> 
> Finally, I had a fun thought that maybe goldar wasn't a name, but a concept. So in Rita's mother-tongue, the suffix -ar is used when a magical construct is made, therefore a goldar is a construct made of gold, and a mudar is a construct made of mud. (Also known as putties, which is the word for a magical construct in Zordon's tongue, and he uses it for reasons.)


End file.
